Male and female idols of the Chinese pornospheremetaphor for a worldview of ‘grand non-narrative’ that lacks the structure and ideologies that
used to characterize modern society.” (Azuma 2009, xvi). There is a contradictory impulse in
publics in cultivating deep empathy towards characters while also coldly decontextualizing and
objectifying them in databases.
Chinese porn publics participate in a global trend towards non-narrativity and database
archiving, while they also project imagined transgressions and debate pornography as an aspect
of civil rights. But unlike the legalized entertainment industries of the Japanese pornosphere,
there is a total lack of government-endorsed classification systems for these Chinese porn sites.
Hence, the online rituals of archiving and commenting on porn stars become a sign of deeper
affective desires and an unregulated popular culture force. While the ban on sexually explicit
media intends to stigmatize these modes of affect, it has in fact created the opposite effect by
enabling collectively endorsed mechanisms of knowledge sharing and release.
Internet pornography infuses sexual relations
The upsurge of pornography and sexual entertainment in China has been documented by
researchers who have noted a transformation in attitudes towards sex entertainment among
the younger post-1980s and post-1990s generations. In 2007, a large-scale survey was carried
out by the China Health and Family Life Survey, which collected data from about 5,000 peo-
ple in 60 neighborhoods in China’s adult population aged 20–64 years (with the exclusion of
Tibet and Hong Kong). Researchers used a combination of computer-assisted, self-administered
statements and face-to-face interviews to get responses from, and also concerning, different age
groups or generational “cohorts.” It was found that the post-1980s’ and post-1990s’ cohorts had
gone through a spectacular increase in the use of private sex, sexual entertainment, and por-
nography. For instance, younger males specifically reported a much younger age at which they
first masturbate, have sexual intercourse, or use commercial sex services. This is in contrast to
non-Chinese cultures such as in the United States or France, where older cohorts more com-
monly use commercial sex services such as peep shows and sex workers. As for Chinese attitudes
towards sexually explicit media, it was found that 75 percent of men and 25 percent of women
within the younger generation were remarkably more at ease with matters of pornography.
Based on these changes, the report concluded that “a sexual revolution” has been occurring in
China as the younger generations have a drastically different outlook on matters of sexuality
than the older generation (Parish, Lauman, and Mojola 2007).
China’s leading sexologist, Siuming Pan, believes that a transformation started taking place
in the early 1980s when sexual pleasure was destigmatized, and people entered a transformed
“primary life cycle” of sexual practices and attitudes. The primary life cycle refers to a totality
of sexual functions and relations that include procreation and a quest for pleasure and enter-
tainment (Pan 2006). The primary life cycle went through its most radical change after the
Cultural Revolution when the concept of romantic love was liberated from associations with
petit-bourgeoisie sentiment. Concepts of love and sexual pleasure were further revitalized with
the introduction of the one-child family (1981), which challenged the traditional equation of
sex with procreation (Pan 2006).
The older generations in Pan’s research testify to a lack of sexual satisfaction within their
marriage and a guilt-ridden drive towards extra-marital pleasures. Alternatively, the younger
generation is more at ease with pleasures and pornography, which are no longer perceived to
be a threat to sexual partnerships or marriage. In my own interviews with female and male
college students aged 18–23, which I carried out in 2010, I sought to find out to what extent